Tregeak. — On the Extinction of the Moa. 425 



language." He goes outside the island ; he finds that in one 

 place "hound" means "dog," in another place the same; where- 

 ever he goes he finds that " hound " is equivalent to " dog." 

 Then, he meditates, " It is possible that the islanders may be 

 mistaken, and that ' hound ' never was the name of the 

 mammoth. Their songs say nothing of ' the huge hound,' 

 'the flesh-producing hound:' it may have been the dog itself 

 which was alluded to. Let us try the compound words." 

 He does so, and finds that a word which is being interpreted 

 " Come here, mammoth ! " should be, " Come here, dog " ; 

 that the word rendered " mammoth-fight " should be "dog- 

 fight," since the words are still so used among sister peoples 

 which never lost the hound. He finds that the compound 

 words exhibit attributes which refer to the dog only, which 

 could not refer to the mammoth, and which prove that the 

 islanders once knew the dog as " hound." In a similar 

 manner I have proved to you that the word " moa" and its 

 compound words prove that "moa" is not the mammoth of 

 birds, the Dinomis. 



There is yet one point unconsidered. Having known the 

 moa as the domestic fowl, did the Maori bestow this name on 

 the Dinomis ? The Maori has been recognised as having 

 more than ordinary powers of acute observation, and he pos- 

 sesses a copious and flexible language. Is it possible that he 

 named the huge grey Dinomis from its likeness to the barn- 

 yard cock ? It is most improbable, and would say little for 

 either his observation or power of linguistic expression. I 

 have heard a suggestion that on coming here he was so im- 

 pressed with the sight of the Dinomis that he called it " the " 

 bird, moa. But moa does not mean " bird " ; manu is the 

 general name for bird; and, although we may speak of " the 

 man of men " in English or Greek or Hebrew as a pre-eminent 

 distinction, we could not do so in Polynesian. We must also 

 remark that tradition bears strong evidence that the moa is a 

 reminiscence of the cock. Mr. Colenso says (Transactions, 

 xii., p. 64) that half a century ago, when he was making his 

 inquiries concerning the moa, he was told that "in general 

 appearance it somewhat resembled an immense domestic 

 cock." x\gain, the traditional feather handed down from 

 generation to generation as a moa's feather was " bright and 

 shining, like the plume of a peacock"; but, then, this feather 

 had been found in a tree, not taken from the bird. It was 

 evident that it was not the dull grey plume of a real Dinomis, 

 it was only that the traditions telling of the bright (cock's) 

 feathers of the moa made the natives think that they had 

 found a plume of their lost bird. 



I do not claim for an instant that this paper has settled 

 the controversy as to whether the Maoris did or did not know 



